


Our Horrible Game

by ghosteyes



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: (suppressing their trauma as hard as possible without alerting their loved ones), Anorexia, Autistic Julian Bashir, Eating Disorders, F/M, Gen, Holodecks/Holosuites, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Julian has an eating disorder, M/M, Medical Jargon, Medical Procedures, Miles has PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Relapsing, Trauma, but it's like...legit medical jargon (special interest gang rise up), food hoarding, just dudes beings bros
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28664463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosteyes/pseuds/ghosteyes
Summary: Miles and Julian, in the midst of their own relapses, attempt to spend a normal evening in the holodeck together and it goes predictably wrong.Content Warning: In depth depiction of eating disorders and PTSD. Stay safe.
Relationships: Julian Bashir & Miles O'Brien, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak, Keiko O'Brien/Miles O'Brien
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> few things I gotta say first
> 
> if description of calorie counting, negative body image, relapsing, fasting, starving, food hoarding, self-harm, and other disordered eating behavior trigger you please do not read this. This is a cope fic for me and that last thing I want is to cause someone else pain. You deserve for good things to happen to you, you deserve to be able to eat without feeling shitty about it. You're not a bad person for giving your body what it needs to function. Love you all and stay safe. Thank's for reading.

Kukalaka’s fur, however mangled by time, is still soft under Julian’s touch. He clutches it, in the dark of the morning, and draws himself together. 

He’s only been awake for a few seconds, it’s already shaping up to be a spectacular mess. There are quite a few nonsensical intricacies Julian considers when calculating whether a day will be Good or Bad. Logically he knows he doesn’t have nearly enough data to be making such a hypothesis, but the nature of his brain is sometimes so fucking illogical. 

The sheets scuff and rustle to his side. “A bear?”

Julian looks over his shoulder where Elim Garak’s dark, shining eyes stare at him with curiosity and no malice. Julian’s jaw still clenches. He can always imagine malice in places when he needs to. Maybe today can be of those days. 

“Dear?” 

Garak looks confused now. 

“Oh, right. Sorry, I was...distracted.” His hand opens and Kukalaka falls to the ground. Julian winces internally. “Just a toy. I don’t even know…” 

His voice trails off, Garak lays a hand on his shoulder. 

“Are you feeling alright?” 

Julian ignores this, and chooses instead to stand up and start getting dressed. “Have you ever felt like some inanimate objects have feelings? And that you can hurt them, just like people?” 

Garak pauses a moment to stare at him, it’s half loving amusement and half calculation. “You have quite the imagination, my dear Jules.”

This time when Julian flinches it’s detectable, especially by Garak’s trained eye. The mood in the room chills and grows stale in an instant. Kukalaka lays abandoned on the floor, alone. Julian picks him up, running his fingers over some of the raw stitches, before placing him back on the shelf next to his side of the bed. 

“Julian.” It’s somehow still a question. 

Julian swallows hard, refusing to meet his boyfriend’s eyes. “I’ve got to go to work.” 

“I just want to know if you’re okay, you obviously have something on your mind, something bothering you. I want to apologize.”

“Ah,” Julian scoffed, “It’s not...It’s not your fault. I really do have to go, we’ve got some early surgeries today and I’m the only specialized in--”

“Can we talk about it after work, then?” 

Julian looks up and realizes Garak is more than genuine. He shuffles over to the edge of the bed and clasps Julian’s thin, nimble hands in his own. 

“It’s...a third Friday, Miles and I have the holosuite booked for after work…” Julian looks up at the ceiling and bites his lip. He doesn’t really feel like doing all that now, but he knows it might cheer him up. 

“After?” 

Garak squeezes his hand. 

Julian sighs, and pulls away. “I’ll probably have completely forgotten by then.” 

“I love you, my dear, I’m guessing that won’t be the case.” 

Damn. That’s what you get when you start dating the ex-spy, lizard hunk, who’s heart is far bigger than he’ll ever admit, Julian supposes. 

“Maybe.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” 

“Mm.” 

Garak kisses him on the forehead before he leaves. 

Julian’s body feels empty. 

It’s fine. He’s made his first decision to see malice. In his own body and it’s fucking constant needs. There’s an empty space between his two hands that his toy bear usually fills but now it’s just a space filled with nothing but a feeling that grows more numb the more he pushes against it. 

It’ll start to feel good soon. He thinks, his uninterrupted, unchallenged thoughts already borrowing deep into forbidden territory. He’s already skipped breakfast, once he gets past lunch the chemistry in his body will catch up with this horrible feverish hole he’s throwing himself against and it will start to feel good. 

There’s a cardiopulmonary endoscopy scheduled at noon, he already has a good excuse. 

Deep Space Nine’s Hospital Sector is a glory to behold in it’s own right. Julian served on a few ships and did his externship time in medical school but he’s never seen an orbiting hospital as large and specialized since he started here. Besides being the most remote outpost at the time, it was part of the reason Julian chose the job. He fucking loves this. 

Halfway between being pushed by his parents and utilizing his remaining non-tennis skills, Julian had discovered medicine stuck to his brain and stayed there. He was always thinking about it a little bit. It made him happy. It made him happy to stay up late, obsessively reading the lastest off-world medical journals. It made him happy to gush about everything he was constantly learning, as is the nature of the field, even if Miles had no goddamned idea what he was talking about. 

For instance, the cardiopulmonary endoscopy he’s scheduled for this afternoon was on a bajoran patient. Bajoran heats are horizontally mirrored. They have upper and lower ventricles and atriums as opposed to left and right. Julian has always thought that was just absolutely fascinating. They even sound slightly different under a stethoscope. 

“Dr. Bashir.” A nurse cuts off his train of thought. “You’re wanted in suite 13.”

Time to go to work. In the room a couple of familiar faces wait for him, fellow surgeons and doctors, as well as a new one; a bajoran woman who instantly sticks out to Julian because of the embroidered gold and red designs on her lab coat. They’re gorgeous and for a few moments, words fail him and he can’t tear his eyes away. 

“Morning doctor,” a friend greets him, “allow me to introduce you to Doctor Brekka Aiko, our patient’s cardiologist out of orbit.” 

Dr. Brekka smiles and holds out her hand, “still the same up here I’m afraid. I’ve been seeing Rairja since she was a teenager, we’re hoping the decreased gravity and fresh eyes helps.”

Julian's body clenches and he nods to her instead. The colors on her lab coat sting his eyes now. Her face is recoils somehow, all Julian can think about is how it reminds him of mashed clay. Just a shape with no discernible meaning. 

His overseer steps in and laughs, his voice a buzzing fly in Julian’s ear as a torrent of self-hate rips through him. Say something! What the hell is wrong with you? His thoughts spin helplessly.

“He isn’t too keen on handshakes, Doctor.”

She raises an eyebrow. 

Julian’s skin burns. 

“Yes, sorry.” He finally manages. “Germs. Pleased to make your acquaintance, looking forward to working together.” 

Lying is so much easier than the truth. Today easy is something Julian desperately needs. 

She squints. Julian remembers this one. He’s made such a fucking fool of himself. 

“Well, you must be a damn good surgeon, Doctor.” She says, which gets a laugh out of everyone else. 

Julian doesn’t get the joke. 

-

The water is always cold on the station. A horrible side effect of most of it being stored in the shell of the station to protect against radiation. Heated water is stored elsewhere and it takes a damn long time to get to the sink outside the surgeon’s suite. As Julian washes his hands post-endoscopy it’s so cold he can’t feel his fingers. 

He made it past lunch, a gentle feverish sensation has settled on his skin, cold and hot, wet and dry. His brain has begun to actively block any pain away. Leaving only numbness and cold static. 

The patient was a young Bajorian woman who’d been living with a rare heart condition ever since she was a girl. The endoscopy allowed Julian to obtain several samples of tissue and measurements. He thinks about it as he cleans up. He usually does. It shouldn’t take very much time at all to map out a treatment plan. 

You must be a damn good surgeon, Docter.

Had she been making fun of him?

His heart drops into his stomach, filled with freezing liquid. 

“I can’t thank you enough for allowing us to come to your facility.”

Julian starts, flinging soapy water all over the floor. Brekka Aiko turns up the corners of her mouth in thin amusement. The patterns of her lab coat gleam in the electric light. 

“Sorry, thought you heard me come in.”

“No no, my bad, I was lost in thought.” Julian rinses his hands off. 

“I see, I just wanted to tell you Doctor Danvers was giving me a quick tour when I found this in one of the exam rooms. She seemed to think you would know what to do with it.” She holds out a brown paper bag. “It was shoved between one of the decorative plants and a lovely model of the eye.” 

Julian doesn’t get the chance to respond before she leaves. Leaving him alone with a strange paper bag that smells...not great. He doesn’t want to open it. Julian opens it anyway. There’s nothing in there but a heavily oxidized apple slice.

Then he gets a hunch.

Julian walks into his office and throws the bag away. Judging from the state of the fruit it couldn’t have been more than four hours old. He pulls up the schedule at his terminal and reasons giving the amount of time the visiting cardiologist spent on her tour there were only about two or three exam rooms she could have been referring to. Julian sees exactly what he’s expecting to see, a completed routine physical for one Miles O’Brien. He had that appointment this morning. Then Julian sees his friend has been scheduling weekly physicals for the past month.

The keys are cold beneath his fingers. He turns the temperature up five degrees and reaches for a sweater. He wasn’t expecting to get the chills so soon. But his body knows what a depraved creature he is and is already preparing for the worst. Which means it’ll start to feel good soon. 

Julian glances over to his desk drawer, which is slightly ajar. When he pulls it open, he’s met with the side of another brown paper bag. He didn’t put it there. This time he tears it open and a dozen or so supplement bars fall onto his desk with sharp cacophony. 

He stares at them, and sees violence. He reads the labels and the nutritional information, but the most striking are the numbers. Sodium, protein, sugar, vitamins, calories. Calories. They’re loaded with them, a snack that only people who hate food could bear because it means the most sutinace with as little eating as possible. Julian loves this part. The adrenaline of relapse leaves him high. He knows what even percentage means and what it would do to him if he ate the entire pile. He knows what a fucking pig it would make him. He can’t bring himself to look away. 

A chime breaks him out of his trance. He’s been summoned to his next appointment. Before he leaves he sweeps the entire pile of supplement bars into the trash. He walks out the door with only those terrible numbers buried deep in his heart.


	2. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: this chapter contains restricting behaviors, references to calorie counting, and fainting because of restricting. stay safe everyone.

“Therapy?” 

Julian’s glass swirled in his hand. Ice and water, no alcohol. No numbers. He actually desperately wishes to get at least tipsy but the fear of the goddamn numbers keeps his mind perfectly sober and miserable.

Mikes sits next to him, but the spikes in his tone of voice make it feel like he’s yelling from across the room. He saw how Julian winced. 

“Yes, just to—just to… Forget it, let’s just, talk about something else—“ 

“No no, I didn’t mean it like that. I just didn’t realize—you can always talk to me about anything, you know that, right?”

Julian glances at him, misery fading away but still palpable. “I know. It’s just…”

It had started so long ago Julian doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t live with the shame-shaped beast in his brain. The suffering built tree rings around his sense of trust, growing thicker each year. 

“Hey, I’m proud of you.” Miles pats his shoulder, then his hand clenches in a funny way as his next sentence forms. “Hell, I know how hard it is.” 

Julian takes a sip of cold, overpriced water. He can still see his best friend holding a phaser to his face, he still remembers how terrified he was. Most importantly how much he’d seen himself in Miles that moment. 

“Yeah. I’ve never…” Julian takes a moment to find his words, reassured by his friend’s gesture. “I’ve never really told anyone, not anyone who wasn’t my doctor at least. I grew up in hospitals. I must have been checked into residential at least three times.” 

“You’ve never told anyone?”

Julian shakes his head.

“Not even Garak?” 

His face burns. “We’ve been on exactly five dates.” 

Miles scoffs. “You’ve been having brunch for two years. When you told me you two got together I was literally expecting you to tell me I was to be your best man.”

Julian rolls his eyes, “Anyway, yes I’ve started therapy again. I’m fine though, I just don’t want to have to be shipped off to Risa on medical leave because my old illness has flared up.”

Miles glances up at him and waits. Julian realizes he’s expecting an explanation. Julian had expected this. That didn’t make it any easier. 

It had started so long ago. 

“I have an eating disorder.” He says under his breath, The words he chose are deliberate. It’s present tense. It’s always been present, 

He can’t bring himself to meet Miles’ eyes, lest he panic and either stare ‘too intensely’ or become so fixated with maintaining a proper amount of eye contact that he stopped being able to think or speak. 

That and, it’s really fucking hard to talk about it. 

Julian knows it’s nothing to be ashamed of, not in any of the ways he punishes himself for, but he feels so full of shame waiting for Miles to say something back. It’s like waiting for a judge’s verdict.

Miles puts a comforting arm around Julian’s shoulders, and gives him a loving squeeze.

“It means a lot that you trust me enough to tell me. Anything I can do to help I will, just say the word.”

“Therapy?” 

Julian flinches as if he’s been struck. 

His father’s voice waves through the subspace communicator, deuted by the sharp tittering of his mother. They exchange inaudible whispers that cut Julian’s confidence like knives, 

“So sorry darling it’s just, I don’t really understand—“

“You asked me what I’ve been up to today.” Julian said through clenched teeth. “I told you I gave an evaluation on a patient’s joint tissue and went to a therapy session.”

He’s holding a plate. His hands are shrinking. Then he’s no longer holding it. Julian feels sick.

“Oh yes we got that.” His father scoffs, “but why? Are you a psychologist now?”

“No for me, Dad. I’ve been going to therapy for myself.” 

“Oh Jules, what happened?” His mother gasps, “Did something happen? Are you alright?”

“Probably just a mandated Starfleet thing dear, nothing can knock a Bashir down!” 

“Am—Am I alright? I’m…” He can’t find the words. 

“Jules?”

“Julian.” He bites. “What do you mean, am I alright? I’ve been sick for years.”

“Are you talking about that stupid picky eating thing you used to have? I thought you got over it—“

Julian hangs up. His thumb mashes frantically down on the shining red button before another word can get out and force him to tears. The silence around him presses in on all sides. It’s a choking, hungry thing. He was eating dinner when his parents called. It sits there mocking him. A half empty plate, a half empty stomach. His abdomen presses him gently to finish his meal but now all he can think is how stupid he is. How disgusting he is. How ugly he is. 

Julian throws the rest in the replicator and watches it disintegrate. 

-

Salted crackers. He can barely taste the first one as it goes down, but he will not be able to conceal his body state from Mikes if he doesn’t get some salt in him. The room isn’t spinning that hard anymore, it’s been worse before. 

“We have our own line of hoodies now, Doctor.” Quark scrubs a glass dry as he walks by Julian’s seat. 

“Pardon?”

“Oh nothing, you just seemed cold.” The Ferengi whistles away, gesturing to a small rack near the bar.. “Twenty slips of latinum for an official Quark’z sweatshirt.”

Julian squints. “Why spell it with a ‘Z’” 

“Oh it’s retro humor. And it can be yours today-“

“Thank you Quark, but I’m okay.” 

He shrugs and walks off.

Julian shivers. Quark probably turned the heat down on purpose to sell this new merchandise of his. One more salted cracker goes down his throat like a shot, disgusting and nulling the ache in his body. 

Miles slides into the bar next to him.

He looks like shit, Julian considers telling him this. No that’s rude. A thousand possible non sequiturs scroll past the tip of his tongue. Ask him about what happened this morning. Ignoring it won’t help either of you. Make sure your friend is okay. 

But Julian is already exhausted, and knows if Miles needs a shoulder to lean on, Julian is going to collapse. That makes him a selfish and terrible person. He just wants the night to go by smoothly. He wants to put on his own oxygen mask before he helps others, but Julian doesn't want to be helped himself. 

“Rough day at work?” Miles asks.

Julian nods, anything more than that was more than Miles was really asking. 

“Yeah, me too. You know how I’ve been working on my own program for the holosuite?’

“Yeah? Have you made any good progress?”

“Better than that,” Miles swivels to face him, composure fixed and smiling. “I think it’s ready enough to test.” 

“Oh wow!” Julian perks up. This is exciting. “Is that what you want to do tonight?”

“If you’re okay with it, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to break out something special to pick us up.” 

He says us, but no one has any idea what Julian’s going through.

“I think that’s a great idea.”

-

Miles inserts a large chip into the holosuite’s input and spends quite a while fiddling with the buttons and a small pad he’s carrying with him. Julian hangs over his shoulder and watches.

“I’ve got a lot of mechanics working, but not the starting interface. I just have to do it manually, eventually it’ll be voice activated like the others. We also don’t need costumes because I haven’t programmed a lot of visual recognition yet because uh, I built a lot of it on top of some open source heist stuff Morn sent me. He’s already so good at it so a lot of the characters don’t look like who they’re based on in my game.”

Julian vaguely remembers hearing Miles say this before, but he’s been so tight lipped about his new programming hobby. “So it’s a heist then?” 

“Oh yes, based on the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. I’m hoping once polish this up I can make something a little more complicated, or maybe never program again because translating Morn’s was hell of it’s own if I’m being honest.” 

Julian laughs genuinely for the first time that day. 

The two of them walk into the holosuite. The room is dark except for the soft orange glow of Miles’s pad. 

“I can’t say I’m familiar with that particular tidbit of history.” 

Miles smirks, and after pressing a few buttons, passes him the pad. “Perfect.” 

The scenery takes shape around them and Julian finds himself standing in a courtyard in front of one of the four towering sides. The gilded entranceway isn’t as detailed as Julian knows it to be, it’s mostly geometric shapes with a picture of the ancient Louvre pasted on top of it. If it had been anyone else, Julian would have been hesitant, playing a game with such low quality graphics, but he knew Miles had crafted this place with his own bare hands for no monetary gain. He could be nothing but impressed. A warmth grows in his chest as Julien thinks about the love and care his best friend put into this experience for the both of them. 

“Wow.” He truly means it. 

Miles laughs, the first genuine one he’s heard all night. “Don’t be too starstruck now, wait until you see the characters.” 

Julien smiles, “alright, how are going to steal the Mona Lisa?” 

“Exactly the way Vincenzo Peruggia did in the 1900’s, we’re going to walk in and take it.” 

Julien frowns, “Surely it’s not that easy?” 

“Oh it won’t, to be fair I didn’t do that much research, and I added a dinner party and a car chase.” 

“Now we’re talking!” 

Thirty minutes later Julian finds himself leaning against a bar with a drink that smells like alcohol but tastes like nothing in one hand, the ornate ceiling of a room in the Louvre towering over him. All sorts of races mill around him, talking and laughing. A Vulcan woman’s dress jingles as she walks past him. He catches the eye of a muscled Bajoran man in blazing reds. A group of Klingons start up a drinking song in one corner, clad in the most detailed and expensive battle armor Julien has ever seen. 

Every single one of them is two dimensional. They slide back and forth like popsicle-stick puppets, none the wiser. 

“Might be hard to secure a date in this city,” Julian remarks. “I’d be afraid to knock them over.” 

Miles laughs, “Did you know three dimensional rendering is incredibly difficult to do yourself? Maybe I’ll ask around and see if anyone wants to model for some scans. Later.” 

“I think I read about stuff like this in early hologram development.” Julien tasks another sip of the tasteless liquid.

“This is how it was done back then.”

Something bugs him, poking at the edge of his conscious thought. His fingers pinch comfortably around the skinny glass. It’s a handsome figure. 

“I didn’t realize you’d have to program in taste.” 

“Oh yeah, each interactable object has its own sensory code. That was an interesting earning curve. What are you having? A Martini? I haven't done those yet, but I did buy a rather promising pack of scotch, ale, and whiskey assets,” he gestures to his amber glass, “it’s not bad,” and downs the rest of his glass in one go. “You should try some of the appetizers.” 

The feeling hits Julien at full force. His fingers tighten around his glass full of nothing. “Let’s see this painting.”

The Mona Lisa is in another room, down a long hallway. The space is rather flat, except for a single broom closet whose door knob is three dimensional and graspable. 

“Oh,” Miles falters, his eyes glued ahead. “I must have forgotten…” 

There is indeed a painting hand on the wall in front of them, curtained off by silver stanchion posts. Instead of a woman sitting still with a small smile on her face, there’s a portrait of four people: Miles with his hand on Molly’s shoulder and Keiko with a sleeping Yoshi in her arms. 

Miles’s face flushes red, but a strange weight hangs over his frame. Julian waits for him to speak. 

“It’s a placeholder image...I must have forgotten to switch them out.”

“Well,” Julian’s chest still feels tight but he thinks he can manage his friend's strange weight this time. “It certainly doesn’t belong in the Louvre.”

Miles shoots him a look of gratitude. Then the lights above them shut off. 

“Oh! The party just ended.” 

“Short party,” Julian remarks as Miles drags him through the dark.

“Sh!” Miles’s hands slap against the walls. 

“I thought voice recognition didn’t work!” Julian whispers.

“The security guards can still hear if you’re making noise!” 

As Julian’s hands grasp the diamond-shaped handle of the supply closet they passed on the way here, his heart starts to race. “In here!”

The two of them slip into the closet and let the door click behind them. It’s darker than the other side of the door, save for the determined orange glow of the pad. Julian starts fumbling around for a light switch. Miles grabs his arms, not saying a word. He can barely see Miles bring a finger to his lips. 

Footsteps tap the tile floors outside. The white glow of a flashlight passes underneath the door frame. They hesitate, and a wave of dizziness washes over Julian. It’s not real, but God if it doesn’t feel it. 

He jumps as an electric tone shatters the silence. Miles's face goes slack, and he slams his hands over his communicator. 

“Miles? I’m really wor--” He cuts off Keiko’s call with another tap. 

Julian shoots him a look. 

Miles gestures to the still frozen lights shining under the door. 

The doorknob twitches, then rattles back and forth. Julian lets out a quiet breath. The door is locked. The light moves on. He rests a hand against the wall to get his balance back. His head rests heavy on his shoulders.

Miles immediately jumps for the handle. It rattles back and forth in his hands as well. He keeps trying the door. Julian can’t figure what he’s trying to accomplish, he’s too dizzy to sort it out properly. Why is he upset? The bad guys can’t get in. 

“What happened to being quiet?” He asks, his words feel fuzzy in his mouth. 

“It’s--It’s not supposed to--are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I just had…” He can’t think of an excuse. Fuck. “A...really good drink.” Julian waves him off, leaning heavily against the wall. 

“They’re not real!” Miles’s hands grasp his shoulders. ”Hey, what’s wrong? Julian? Julian?”

Julian realizes he’s sliding the ground just before he passes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> info dump time. I didn't realize there would be quite so much programming jargon, but I couldn't stop thinking about the process in which holosuite programs might be made. How do you code smells and tastes start trek!! I gotta know!!! They're probably one of the mainstream forms of video gaming in this future, of course people are making their own. Plus Julian and Miles are both already larping nerds, and Miles is an engineer. he's one slippery step away from learning to program as a hobby! Also *I* really love programming languages and making games, I couldn't resist :3 Thank you for reading!


End file.
